The most memorable Christmas gift that I ever received was a framed grouping of three photographs given to me by my husband, Mark, a few years ago.  Every now and then, I mentioned to him about how I’d like to have photos of the three houses that were my childhood homes before they’re knocked down as changes seem to happen quicker today in Stamford and the surrounding towns than ever before.  He took photos of the houses on sunny, blue-sky days and presented them to me in this gift.  The houses don’t look like they did long ago when I lived in them.  However, I feel the memories of what the houses looked like at one time.  Under the blue vinyl siding of my first home on Jefferson Street in Stamford are the red shingles and green-painted posts of the home where I lived with my family on the first floor from my birth year, 1959, to 1970.  My grandparents, who emigrated from Poland in 1907, lived on the second floor of our house that they bought in 1926.  I see my grandparent’s nativity of the Lord from Poland in their livingroom and my mother setting the gold-trimmed angel on the top of the Christmas tree in ours.  Many of the neighboring homes were similar, with three generations, a patchwork under one roof, the oldest generation made up of immigrants from Poland, Italy, and Ireland.  Around the corner, on Canal Street, were industrial manufacturers that included the remnant of a maker of locks and keys where my father was valued as a journeyman in the trade of diemaker in 1962.  In my thoughts, I fly around another corner, onto Elm Street, to where I went to school at St. Mary’s, wave hello to our Blessed Mother of Hope at St. Mary’s Church of French Gothic architecture with the rose window, run up Cove Road to Seaside Avenue, to my second childhood home in Stamford.  The house in the photo has beige siding and stark, modern windows.  Underneath it, I see the cheery yellow paint of the house divided into three apartments, one of which I lived in after my parents’ divorce.  The front porch has disappeared in the photo, however, I see the porch of long ago.  My sisters and I played there when it rained and ran down the steps in the winter sun, to race to the backyard and throw down snow angels in deep snow.  I see a Christmas Day when an aunt and uncle brought my sisters and me beautiful dolls at a time that was difficult and lonesome.  The last photo is of my home in Darien, my mother’s childhood town, where we moved after a couple of years on Seaside.  My husband took the photo from across the street.  I don’t know how he did it, but he captured an angle of a green oak tree and a red maple tree that intersected to make a pointed archway, reminiscent of church architecture, above the house and blue sky.  In my thoughts, the same gold-trimmed angel tops the Christmas tree.  My sisters and I rushed out the kitchen door of the house, piled into my mother’s car and drove across the tracks, to the other side of town, in snow-filled streets to my Italian grandparents’ house for a home-made ravioli dinner.  From three photographs, memories make the most memorable Christmas gift to me.